T. S. Eliot toAllenGinsberg.
GlenwayWescott, born at the turn of the century in the
AmericanMidwest,was independentlywealthyandcouldhave
chosen any career path he wanted. His straight brother Lloyd
became a famous agriculturalist and public servant, but Glen-
way chose poetry and eventually fiction as his route to fame,
living a somewhat bohemian life in Paris andNewYorkwith
his lifelongpartnerMonroeWheelerwhileLloydseededhis for-
tunes innorthernNewJersey.
Another decidedly self-made lifewas that ofAngusHeriot,
whoseemeddestinedtobecomeaBritishbanker inkeepingwith
family tradition, but who became instead a novelist andmulti-
lingual critic and literary gossipwhosemost famousworkwas
titled
TheCastrati inOpera
.While gallivanting about Europe,
he turnedout ribald stories andnovels about cruising for sex in
Piccadillyor attendingorgies onprivate islands.
Then there’sGoreVidal, whowrestledwith the tensionbe-
tweenhispolitical aspirations and“the fag thing,”whichhe felt
prevented him fromachieving a certain kind of respectability.
So he became an über-gadflywho jabbed at theAmerican es-
tablishment, a“traitor tohis class,”writinga seriesof historical
novels that exposed the corruptionof it all and shockingevery-
onewith
MyraBreckinridge
.Tryas hedid todisown it, thegay
thing is hard to factor out of his decision to become an exile in
bothhis life andwork.
R
ICHARD
S
CHNEIDER
J
R
.
T
HIS ISSUE brings you some famous and semi-famous
people from the 20th century who were seen and who
sawthemselvesasoutsiders, asaberrations—peoplewho
consciouslyfloutedconventionyetmanaged tocarveout aplace
for themselvesasartists intheir timeandeventolivehappylives
(up toapoint).Their status asoutsiders seems togobeyond the
fact that they were also gay or lesbian, though the latter fact
seemsnot incidental to theiroverall eccentricity.Whether itwas
the cause—whether, broadly speaking, beinggay iswhatmade
them strange—it does appear to have knocked them all off
course fromwhat their destinymight otherwise have been.
Roger Casement was a British consul who spent years in
AfricaandSouthAmerica investigating theworkingconditions
of laborers under neocolonial rule, and he later became a free-
domfighter for Irish independence.That heusedhisposition to
formsexual liaisonswith localmenmayhave just beenanarti-
fact of his travels—amanhasneeds!—or theunderlying
raison
d’être
of his chosen career path;who can say?
Oneof themore famous eccentrics ofmid-centuryAmerica
was the poet MarianneMoore, who lived with her mother all
her life and had a fascination for exotic animals. These peculi-
arities inevitably lead to the suspicion that shewas a secret les-
bian, holingupwithmom—who
was
a lesbian—toavoidfacing
the world of men. And yet, she lived a perfectly public life,
teachingandwinningawardsandbefriendingfellowpoets from
Pride 2014 Issue: Eccentricities
FROMTHEEDITOR
4
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. Bushandman
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hwriter
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yother
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ocate for free speec
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All of JamesBaldwin’s
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IGNITINGHEARTSANDMINDS
